Hundreds Honor Crash Victim’s Life

Each of the framed pictures on the table at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Parish Church revealed another dimension to the life of William Robert Story.

There were pictures of Story the devoted husband and parent on a ski trip with his wife, Judy, and two stepdaughters, Anna, 16, and Jillian, 24. Then there was the picture of Story the fun-lover with friends dressed in Halloween costumes. Yet another commemorated his work for a favored hospital charity, the City of Hope, on whose board he served.

The Corona del Mar church was packed Friday as more than 300 people filled pews, stood by walls and peeked through doors from outside during a memorial service for one of the Orange County victims of TWA Flight 800.

White roses with white ribbons were distributed to the mourners as reminders of the friend they had lost, and whose body has yet to be recovered.

Story, 51, president and chief executive officer of National American Insurance Co. of California, was en route to Paris for a business meeting when he died in the tragic crash.

For Randy and Eleanor Ginsberg of Palos Verdes Estates, the irony was awful. The Ginsbergs were not only close friends of William and Judy Story, but Randy has been a TWA pilot for more than 30 years, and the Ginsbergs had taken the same TWA flight to Paris five days before the accident.

They heard about the accident while on a barge trip and didn’t learn that their friend might have been killed until two days later.

“We went through hell,” Eleanor Ginsberg said. “It was the not knowing that was so frustrating. It was absolutely devastating.”

They cut their vacation short and hurried home as soon as possible.

They had been Judy Story’s friends from their college days together at the University of Washington, and befriended William Story six years ago when he began dating Judy.

“He was such a well-loved man, terrific, gentle and considerate,” she said. The Ginsbergs also plan to attend the memorial service today at the Glendale Masonic Temple for Ralph Kevorkian, the co-pilot of the ill-fated flight who lived in Garden Grove.

Dr. Joel Manchester, a golfer buddy, said in his eulogy that Story would not have wanted his friends and survivors to grieve or mourn him. And so they shared anecdotes to celebrate his life.

Manchester held up a poster of Iowa to show everyone where Story was from. As an East Coast native, Manchester related how he had told Story that Iowa had to be near the end of the Earth.

“No, but you can see it from there,” Story was said to have replied.

“Iowa represents America’s heartland,” said Jim Clary, who worked with Story for nine years. “Humble, honest, industrious, unpretentious--that was Bill Story.”